Firstly, a HUGE thank you to everyone who has supported me over the last 4 years. I literally wouldn’t be writing this blog if it wasn’t for you!
In 2017, I left my well-paid job that I enjoyed, to set up my own Virtual Assistant (VA) business. I started with zero clients, little understanding of how to run a business, no contacts or network and even less confidence in myself.
Today, I have an epic client base and a team of VA’s who support our clients.
I also:
· Mentor and train new and established VAs
· Have my own podcast
· Have published e-books
· Have a suite of products and services for VAs
I’ve learnt sooo many lessons over the last 4 years, however there is one lesson that is the biggest and applies to absolutely everything:
Service
I’ve learnt that you can have the best website or prettiest social media accounts, etc etc, but if you haven’t nailed your service for new and existing clients, you might as well not bother.
I learnt this the hard way.
Six months after I set up my business, I started to get too busy as I was saying yes to absolutely everything.
Before I knew it, I'd taken on too many clients I didn't have the infrastructure that I needed to support clients properly. They started to become unhappy.
I didn't really understand or know how to support clients because I was the person doing the delivery and I was so busy with that.
I avoided awkward conversations/addressing things and just cracked on trying to do the best that I could.
That method resulted in losing clients. I had a period of about two months where I was losing clients regularly without them really saying why. Sometimes they did tell me why (my service had dropped) and others just made excuses and left.
This period of losing clients really rattled me and I didn't know what to do.
I started to look at how I could make clients happy, reconnect and build strong relationships with them.
The first thing that I did was to decide from that day, I wasn't going to take on any new clients directly and any new client would work directly with my team.
I also wouldn’t overload my VAs, so they could easily support our clients without feeling overwhelmed themselves.
Clients ALWAYS have a choice and I underestimated that at the time, because I was confident in my ability to deliver.
It wasn’t intentional, I was trying my best, however as I’d taken on too much work, I couldn’t see the wood from the trees.
I really started to drill down and work out what clients want and need, over the standard delivery/contractual terms.
I made a plan and put it into action.
Today, we have a great client retention rate, and we are still serving clients who I started with in 2017.
Here are the top 5 things I did to work on relationship building and customer service:
1. Scheduled monthly service review calls with clients (this was a game changer)
2. Created a strong on-boarding process for clients
3. Was proactive and transparent with potential issues
4. Was responsive to client’s needs
5. Celebrated (anniversaries, holidays etc)
Today, my main focus is keeping clients and my VAs happy. Not because it’s part of my process/my job, but because it’s my goal to serve clients and help them achieve their business goals and to take off the load and stress from them.
I love working with all of our clients and I’m truly grateful to them.
Here’s to another 4 years.
Emilia